"Dated, but otherwise excellent"

Escape Velocity: Override is an excellent and inventive game from Ambrosia Software, makers of of some of the finest shareware available for Macintosh. It's an RPG of sorts, though doesn't fit nicely into any traditional genre.

It's 150 years into the future, and humans have spread out across much of the galaxy. You're a young pilot who has just gotten a shuttle and is off to seek his or her fortune. You can ally yourself with Earth's government, a large corporation or two, and any number of renegade and alien groups. Or you can remain a humble trader. In this way, it follows the traditional open-endedness of RPGs.

There are numerous plot lines you can follow based partially on luck and partially on what decisions you make. The game never really ends, but certain plots can end.

The game is presented in what could be called an overhead perspective, except there is no up and down in space. At any rate, it's 2d, and you see the ships and planets laid out on a flat plane with a star field in the background.

The planets are where the major developments happen. There is no fighting on the ground, but this is where you get missions, gamble, buy and sell cargo, hire escorts, refuel, buy new ships or upgrade your current one. Space is where the action happens. You fly through space to get between systems, fight, explore and communicate with other ships.

You start off in the Sol system with the cheapest and generally weakest ship in the game and a few credits. What you do is up to you. The easiest thing is to land on Earth and take a small mission from the government, thus opening up Earth government missions. These don't pay very well though, so you'll probably want to find other groups to work for as well. Pretty soon you should have enough money for a new ship. There are dozens of ships between all the cultures in the game, each one rated on numerous factors like weapon space, cargo space, mass, speed, acceleration, turning speed and armor. There are quite a few upgrades available, but they are more limited than those of Escape Velocity, so you can't turn any ship into anything. For instance, there are no armor upgrades, and thrust and maneuvering upgrades are very limited.

EVO is also quite extendible. There are hundreds of plug-ins available on Ambrosia's website, several of them quite good. The site also has the tools for making plug-ins and some guides to help get you started. The interface could have better though, as you have to move plug-ins in and out of a folder rather than turning them off and on from within the program, and it lets you use multiples plugs at once, even though this causes compatibility problems.

The game has a few other problems, too. You can get stuck without any apparent way to advance the plot line. You can fire on friendly ships without consequences if you don't target them. And the background isn't parallaxed. It was released in 1996, and the graphics show its age. It runs in 16-bit color (from indexed 8-bit source material), uses small sprites for everything and communicates through text. Also, it's only single player as its concept of time wouldn't work in multiplayer.

Escape Velocity: Override is shareware, so if any of this sounds interesting at all, head over http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com and download it. The unregistered version is a fully functional copy. It even supports plug-ins. However, if you don't register, you'll have trouble keeping a fat bankroll as you'll regularly get robbed by Cap'n Hector.

The registration fee is $25, or a $15 upgrade from Escape Velocity. As I said, the game is rather old, so it may or may not be worth it to you. Checking it out is the best way to decide.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/01, Updated 02/24/01